Vulcans and the Women Who Love Them
by theCalliope
Summary: The first woman to marry a Vulcan, Amanda Grayson becomes the icon of a movement she knows nothing about. One shot.


**_Warning: This is a highly experimental fic. It might not quite make sense :) Read at your own risk._**

Amanda Grayson is walking down the hallway towards a balcony with a glass door. In her hand, she holds a basket. As she walks, two young women in matching robes enter the hallway behind her, follow her for a few meters and turn left, making the bright light pouring through the door visible again. Gingerly, Amanda opens the door, and lifts the basket over the threshold. Her eyes pan the Vulcan landscape as the door falls shut behind her. A warm yellow and gold, the harsh landscape juts out in crags and pinnacles, unbroken except for the odd building, gleaming, grey and opposing hidden among the rocks. There is a tremor, but it is just and illusion, light streaming through rising lines of hot air.

After one last look, Amanda turns around, and inside the balcony is lush and green. Flowers sprout in elaborate clay pots and vines bearing bright fruit sprout from hanging baskets and coil around dark wooden posts. Moving back to the door, Amanda opens it and yells some words in Vulcan. In a minute, a woman in uniform emerges holding a watering can. Accepting it without a word, Amanda tests the soil in several pots with her fingers and slowly adds water, using one hand to hold her robes as she crouches. As she reaches over violet tufts into a planter, a sharp chirping noise comes from behind her. Putting down her watering can, she moves towards the basket she left by the door. Kneeling down, she leans over it, and pulls down some blankets, revealing a baby with deep set eyes and pointed ears. Tenderly, her hand traces across his forehead and his ears. The chirping lessens.

"Do you want a lychee?" she asks in a soft, childish voice, and the baby continues staring at her with large, bright eyes.

"Of course you want a lychee," she croons on, with a smile, walking towards a vine bearing pink orbs the size of tennis balls. On her tiptoes, she reaches for the brightest orb and plucks it, her long robes barely leaving the ground.

Making a crack in the fruit, Amanda holds it up to the baby's face, and he sucks juice from it hungrily. He looks let human when he eats, his eyes getting even wider, his cheeks moving out far more than they should. But Amanda sees none of this, and watches him drink lovingly until the fruit is just a shell.

He keeps chirping, and she fetches him another fruit, a small pear, which he crunches through, with pointed teeth before chirping some more.

"You want attention, don't you,"

Amanda whispers, using one of the blankets to wipe his face. Reaching into the basket, she picks him up, and holds him to her shoulder, her face against his cheek. His body is long and insectoid, with small, curved, dangling legs. Holding him out in front of her, Amanda bounces him up and down, singing,

"You're a baby, aren't you, aren't you."

He laughs a high, snorting laugh as she holds him, his cheeks bulging inhumanly. As she lifts him up above her head, and lets his nose touch hers, smiling, a banner falls over the screen.

_VULCANS AND THE WOMEN WHO LOVE THEM_

_Voiceover: In 2233, Sarek and Amanda Grayson stunned the world by announcing their impending marriage. While the possibility of interspecies relationships had been the subject curiosity, speculation and late-night comedy for some time, the marriage brought the issue to the forefront of the public mind._

An image appears of Times Square, a billboard for a news service in the center. _Ambassador Announces Engagement to Human Mistress_ is the second headline below _Romulan Trade Treaty Talks Stall_.

_Like many issues at the time, there was a split of opinions between those with pro-Federation and pro-human beliefs._

A news clip, dated August 3, 2233, appears on the screen, with _United Earth President Uncabe Remaltz_ as the title bar. A man in a snow white suit beams as he reads a statement.

"Throughout the last few years, the human and the Vulcan races have worked together as never before, and I can think of no better testament to this friendship than the marriage of Amanda Grayson and Ambassador Sarek."

The image changes to a small, unfinished room with bright lights. Two men sit at a wooden table with a microphone between them. A banner hanging off the table reads _Right on UP!_

"Seriously, Stan," one of the men says, with a southern accent, "I agree with you completely. I don't understand the left's assertion that this means something. I mean last week, I read that there was a lady that had sex with her dog, and wanted to marry her dog, and it doesn't mean that we should all jump up and accept dogs as our allies. There're sick people everywhere, doing all sorts of disgusting things, and I think we ought to feel sorry for them, and try to heal their sickness, not jump on their bandwagons."

_The news of the birth of the couple's son Spock created quieter, more varied debate._

A man in a white lab coat sits at what looks like a witness stand. The camera pans, and it becomes clear that he is part of a panel. _Fourth Invitational Interspecies Surgeon Conference_, a banner above the table reads, surrounded by the banners of sponsors.

"While I disagree with Dr. Kwartha's choice on several fundamental levels, I do feel that his actions fell within ethical boundaries. Amanda Grayson made it clear in no uncertain terms that she wished to save her unborn child, regardless of the risks to herself, the significant possibility of birth defects and the uncertain outcomes for an interspecies child."

_Spock is now twelve years old, and is hitting both Human and Vulcan developmental milestones._

_But the first human-Vulcan marriage meant something different to Lauren Range, who for years, had run an underground organization for human women who are attracted to Vulcans_.

The image changes to a woman in her thirties, with chin-length dark hair, wearing a low-cut black top.

"At first, we mostly met in bars," she says, with a reflective look at the ceiling, "Places that were frequented by visiting Vulcans. And eventually, I got to know a couple of women who were always there, lurking."

For a moment, she looks uneasy, but then breaks into a smile.

"At the time, of course, it was a really secret thing. You couldn't really ask someone if they were interested in Vulcans, even, so we had all sorts of codes, like asking if they'd read certain books on Vulcan anatomy, or remembered scenes in certain movies. But eventually, we started getting together and really talking."

Lauren Range clasps her hands together.

"And it was a few weeks after Sarek announced his engagement to Amanda Grayson, and really, after President Remaltz stated that he was going to make interspecies marriage a legally-protected category for discrimination, that we started to discuss making our group public. Not making an announcement on the evening news or anything, but maybe starting a website and posting on a couple of sexuality forums to see if we got any new members."

_A few weeks later, the website for the _Association for the Love of Vulcans_, or the ALV , went public. They gained almost five hundred new members in their first three weeks._

"At the time," Lauren laughs, "It was a bit sensational. And I think part of it was the fear that if enough women started liking Vulcans, that they would somehow take all the women away from human men."

_A few weeks later Lauren Range, who had started the website anonymously, was unmasked, and started receiving threats_.

"Dear Lauren," Lauren reads from a PADD, "You are a perverted pig who is clearly too ugly to attract a human man. You make me sick. I would kill you if I didn't think the Vulcans will, when they realize what filth they attracted."

"This was my very first piece of hate mail," she says brightly.

_Amanda Grayson also got her share of hate in the first few years of her marriage. She also got many letters from members of the ALV._

"I consider myself to be pretty average," Amanda says, sitting in a chair, with a window revealing the Vulcan landscape behind her, "And it was strange, getting letters from people who thought I was some sort of hero, or who wanted to be just like me."

She titters.

"And they asked me a lot of questions that were … rather personal."

The screen changes to a scene of Amanda walking down the hall, in long robes.

"And for a lot of them, it seems almost like a fantasy. Like they don't realize that it was a difficult adjustment. Like they don't realize that like a lot of things, it requires sacrifice."

Amanda is standing in the bathroom, in front of a well-lit mirror. A Vulcan servant is standing behind her. Slowly, the woman brushes her hair, and puts it up in a perfect knot, piercing it with two sharp, glittering pins. Then, two woman dabs a cloth across Amanda's face. Carefully, she brushes powder across her face, and then outlines her eyes with a pencil, making them seem darker, and more Vulcan.

The shot cuts to Amanda standing with the same woman, but now dressed in an elaborate blue dress. The servant grabs the skirt and shakes out some wrinkles. Then, they walk into the front hall, where the rest of the household staff is already lined up. Amanda takes the head of the line.

The front door opens, and Sarek walks in, and his eyes are two beams as he inspects his household.

"Wife, attend," he says in Vulcan, which is subtitled. Amanda walks towards him.

_Voiceover: Within three years, the AVL had burgeoned to over 10 000 members._

"At that point," Lauren Range says with a pointed grin, "Our numbers had got so large that we could no longer conveniently get together. At first, we thought this was a bad thing, but then we realized we just had to think bigger."

Lauren's voice is replaced with the hum of a crowd, and the camera zooms in on a banner reading _ALVcon 6—Sixth Annual Convention for Lovers of Vulcans_, and then zooms out to show a large crowd.

Then, there is a series of pictures. A plump, middle-aged woman standing behind a table with a model of a Vulcan torso on it. A young woman browsing through a stall of Vulcan pornography. Two women with their arms around a man wearing plastic ears.

An image appears of a woman with long, bleach-blond hair talking into a microphone.

"I think Vulcans are so hot," she gushes, "I mean they're all so gorgeous, and have good bodies and they're all smart and logical and stuff. I think they're like awesome."

The image fades, and is replaced by Lauren in her chair.

"We call girls like that gazers, people who have never slept with a Vulcan, and aren't specifically oriented towards Vulcans, but join the ALV because they like the community, or because it's trendy or because it makes them feel sophisticated and cosmopolitan."

Lauren's brow furrows.

"It's something I'm in two minds about, really. One on hand, if it's considered 'in' to like Vulcans, then it becomes more recognized and mainstream, and it means we're less likely to be discriminated against. On the other hand, there being so many people who, really, for most of them, being into Vulcans is just a passing phase can detract from the community."

The silhouette of a woman appears. The scene is backlit, so her face is not visible.

"While a lot of people don't mind them," she says, "I think that these gazers really take attention away from the struggles we face. Most of them are young, and either haven't thought it out, or don't have a lot to lose. I mean even with the amendment to the anti-discrimination act in place, the fact is that many of my company's customers live in places where interspecies unions aren't really approved of, and if anyone found out about my interest in Vulcans, I could very well lose my job."

The scene turns back to Lauren.

"It's true, that a generational split is starting to form in the organization, between the original members who remember when we feared for our lives, and the new members who think it's no big deal or even a hot new trend. And there's also starting to be more women in the organization who are married to Vulcans, who just happened to fall in love with a Vulcan."

Lauren shuffles her feet and turns slightly.

"And truthfully, this isn't an organization for women who happen to be in love with Vulcans, it's for women who are sexually attracted to Vulcans. And it has to be about the sex, because otherwise we're racist. If we say that Vulcan men have better personalities, we're racist. And if we go back to the roots of the organization, it wasn't really about personality. It started out as a group of women who had sex with Vulcans."

"How many Vulcans have you had sex with?" a voice grumbles from the background, the cameraman.

Lauren looks up at the ceiling and, letting her hair fall into her face, bashfully holds up eight fingers.

"A lot of women say I couldn't handle the life style," she goes on in a different shot, "And while I like to think I could be like Amanda, and meet the perfect Vulcan and have a happy life, maybe they're right. Maybe I couldn't handle the lifestyle. But this isn't about handling the lifestyle."

A desert scene appears, which pans, and then becomes clearly the Vulcan landscape. Amanda is holding baby Spock. He gazes at the camera with dark, inhuman eyes.

"A lot of people ask me what it's like to be married to a Vulcan," she speaks softly, "And it's kind of a funny question. Every marriage requires adjustments, and once you get used to them, you stop thinking about them. The truth is that Sarek being Vulcan is something I hardly think about at all."

The camera moves out as Amanda holds Spock's long body against her shoulder. It zooms out into the Vulcan landscape and fades to black.


End file.
